Education

The Behaviourist and Ringing the Bell

What you should know about Performing Arts, Pavlov’s dogs and Skinner’s pigeons

Theories of learning are concerned with how we learn. It is widely agreed that initially we take in external stimuli through our senses, however the theory deals with what happens after that, how the stimuli is organised. There are five main theories that look at this:

1. Behaviourism
2. Neo-behaviourism
3. Cognitive development
4. Gestalt
5. Humanist

The Behaviourist theory came about in the early twentieth century and came from the supposition that human learning could be foreseen and explained by the study of behaviour in animals. One of the forerunners of this theory was John B. Watson an American psychologist:

Watson claimed that psychology was not concerned with the mind or with human consciousness. Instead, psychology would be concerned only with behavior. In this way, men could be studied objectively, like rats and apes.

DeMar, 1989, [online]

Watson’s work was based largely on the studies of Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov’s study into ‘classical conditioning’ started with his dogs. His most famous experiment dealt with the salivation of the dogs. Upon ringing a bell and then feeding them, the dogs soon learned that food was coming and salivated upon its arrival. Later Pavlov could ring the bell and brought no food yet the dogs still salivated. Therefore a change in behaviour had occurred; the dogs had been conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell. This hypothesis therefore dealt with stimulus ‘S’ and response ‘R’, the bell being the stimulus bringing about the response of salivation, ‘S-R’. (Reece and Walker, 2007, 81)

B.F. Skinner tested Watson’s theories in his laboratory, leading him to reject Watson’s emphasis on conditioning and reflexes. He agreed that humans respond to their environment but also produce certain consequences by operating on it. Skinner therefore developed his theory of ‘operant conditioning’ believing that past influences and reinforcements bring about current behaviour. Meaning that behaviour is displayed in expectation of a reward, similarly his theory used stimulus, response and most importantly reward or reinforcement.

If reinforcement is not given he believed that eventually it would cause the extinction of response. Therefore using this theory more complex learning can occur if broken down into smaller sections in sequence, this is defined as ‘shaping behaviour’, the final outcome being the terminal behaviour and the smaller steps being successful approximations. In this way Skinner managed to teach pigeons how to play table tennis! (Gould, 2009, 12–13)

Implications of Behaviourist theory for teaching and learning

Behaviourist theory concentrates on the extrinsic and is not concerned with cognitive reasoning. It concentrates on the change that happens when learning takes place. Today we use this theory when planning lesson objectives as these have to be measurable; therefore we have to extrinsically measure the change. Using this theory would need a step by step systematic approach based on behavioural objectives; this would include repetition, feedback and reward.

This would require certain methods such as when learning a new skill, analysis would be needed along with demonstration, questioning and practise. If a particularly difficult skill was to be learned this would be done step by step, using the method of shaping until the terminal behaviour was reached. Assessment would need a predetermined outcome or answer and be objective. Assessment could take the form of observation against a checklist, closed questions, multiple choice and matching lists along with many more. Within the classroom both positive and negative reinforcement would need to be used to adhere to the Behaviourist theory so that the extinction of response did not occur.

How does this link to Performing Arts?

I have identified that my practical teaching includes a large amount of the Behaviourist theory. Graded Examinations in Dance and Drama are concerned with progressive mastery in defined stages. For each grade or level a new set of skills must be learned. Planning for this requires a step by step systematic approach, if learning a particularly difficult combination of skills these would require breaking down, demonstrating, practise being repetition with feedback and eventually the reward of performing the new skills.

This approach is almost completely behaviourist as the learning is measurable by the practical demonstration. For this to be successful you would need to be precise in your own demonstration or modelling, otherwise as your students copy your demonstration, they would learn the actions incorrectly. In terms of planning objectives are often practical and visable such as, ‘perform’ or ‘respond’, linking directly to the extrinsically measurable.

Although the final summative examinations within these subjects are portrayed as observation against a checklist, there is grading against the checklist, therefore, although the assessment method could be viewed as Behaviourist there is not a predetermined answer. Instead there are levels within the list relating to mastery and performance, therefore for this reason the examination is subjective and therefore not the objective testing required fitting the theory. Nevertheless, on the whole, the formative teaching and learning aspect of this genre fits in with the theory of Behaviourism.

Article written by Drama Llama | Educator | Writer | Academic | Consultant